


Consanguinity

by vinnie2757



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst, Background Character Death, Explicit Language, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, cid is an overprotective dad, cids potty mouth, it's set in icicle inn after disc one final boss, its been a lifetime, yall know what that is, yuffie has a crush and it sets off cids alarms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: 'God, look at me. A good friend is dead, and here I am thinking about boys. I really am as stupid as Godo always said.'It's in the hardest moments that you find the strongest support.[Cid and Yuffie found family bonding.]
Relationships: Cid Highwind & Yuffie Kisaragi, Cid Highwind/Shera
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	Consanguinity

**Author's Note:**

> It's been an entire lifetime since I wrote anything for this fandom, but lockdown makes us all productive! Honestly, I've been trying to write this fic for over a year now, and I'd written myself into a corner so I started from scratch and here we are.
> 
> Enjoy my lovelies!

_“I would rather start a family than finish one.”_

**Don Marquis**

It’s a strange thing, watching someone you love die.

It isn’t the first time it’s happened, and Yuffie is sure, even a scream rips itself out of her throat, a desperate cry of her name, but it’s like screaming into a void, she’s sure that this is not going to be the last time.

The scream fades into nothing, like it’s been swallowed whole by the black shadow of _his_ coat, and they just – all they can do is stand there. They just stand there, and they listen to the sound of sharpened steel cut flesh and bone, and the tiny, _tiny_ gasp of breath that sounds like a hurricane.

Yuffie can feel, as they stand at the lakeside and they watch the ribbon come undone and the white materia that had always been so _useless_ , they watch and listen as it plinks and clinks, bouncing down the steps to disappear into the water, she can feel her breath waver, a scream welling in her throat.

Everything is still for a second, and _he_ grins, slow and steady. She can see the blue of his eyes from here. Cloud’s shoulders are shaking, his fingers twitching, but then the blade is free and he’s moving, catching her as she falls, and it’s that easy, that simple. Just like that.

She’s gone.

Cid grabs her arm. Tifa and Barret are moving, and Yuffie goes to move with them. Cloud is yelling, Sephiroth is laughing. A Jenova _thing_ screeches.

‘Wait,’ Cid says, but Yuffie yanks her arm free.

She’s breathing hard, in through the nose out through the mouth, a bull before the red flag of her blood. Cid is quick for an old man, and grabs her arms. She’s up to her shins in the water, ready to climb up after the others, ready to face down that monster and – and – and –

The scream comes, and Cid is there to hold it, twisting her around to bury her face in his chest. He stinks of oil and sweat and cigarettes, and she clutches uselessly at him. Punches him a couple of times, but she could have punched a wall. He takes it, holds her close, a hand on her back, a hand in her hair.

Her own father never held her so close and she’d been so _young_.

‘Let them,’ he murmurs, in a voice so hollow she could shatter it into a thousand pieces by looking at it.

He guides her back onto the dry lakeside, step by step, and she can feel his jaw moving against her temple as he holds her face against him, stops her seeing what the fight above looks like. The sound of bullets and steel and the enraged, harrowed screaming coming from them as they – they – it isn’t a fight to save. It’s a fight to – to kill. To destroy. To pay back.

‘Cid,’ she chokes out, and he shifts, moves, and his jacket, warm and heavy, drapes over her head.

It doesn’t stop the noise, it doesn’t take the blood from behind her eyes, but like a cat, she is cocooned in the darkness he offers her. She’s going to see the blood, and the coat, and the shine of his eyes in the darkness for the rest of her life, but for now. For now, Cid is doing the best he can, and she’s – she’s grateful, even if she can’t put it into words.

His heart beats too-steady against her eye. His shirt is wet with tears, black now, not the sweat-and-grease blue. A migraine forms to the pulse of her heart struggling to fall into stride with his. His hand rubs callused and dry against her back. The toolkit on his belt digs into her belly. She doesn’t move; the mark from a wrench stays imprinted there for several hours.

She has no right to grieve, and yet, she finds herself able to think of nothing else.

Cid continues to hold her, and she continues to cry.

When it is done, Tifa comes and takes her hand, strokes her hair. Her face is very carefully neutral, brown eyes sad and yet full of nothing, Yuffie has no tears left for now. She’d kept her face in Cid’s chest for her own selfish reasons, but he hadn’t complained, and so she hadn’t moved.

‘We’re saying goodbye,’ Tifa says, and Yuffie nods, but doesn’t let go of the fistful of Cid’s shirt.

Tifa looks at him, and he looks at Tifa. They both look at Yuffie. Cid nods, and Tifa lets go of Yuffie’s hand, strokes her hair one final time.

‘I’ll wait here,’ she says, and Yuffie wants to hug her.

Cid is at her side the entire time. He doesn’t say anything. He looks at Aerith, asleep but for the blood soaking her dress, and then he looks at the ceiling. Yuffie glances at him. There’s a glimmer on his cheek, catching in the light, but his jaw is clenched, his eyes resolute. Yuffie kneels next to her, arranges her dress, strokes the hair from her face.

There are lots of things she needs to say. She doesn’t know where to start. With her mother, it had been easy. With the villagers, it had been simple. There had been words created for her, words for her to read and recite. She had understood what she had to do.

This – she doesn’t know where to begin. What to say first. What she should keep to herself, and what Cid should be able to hear.

Her lip wobbles. Aerith’s hand is cold in hers.

Aerith would tell her that she’s strong, that she’s been through so much and it has made her the most beautiful girl in the world and that she was so proud of her for doing what she does. Aerith would tell her not to be sad, because this is what was meant to be, that she was doing what the Planet needed her to do, and that she, Yuffie, had things of her own that the Planet needed her to do. Aerith would tell her that she loved her, and that she wanted her to be happy, and that she was going to grow up and be the best ninja ever, and that all the things she’d promised to help her with would work out, because that was the way of things. Aerith said it, and it came to be, and who needed to worry about things like boys anyway? More trouble than they were worth, and Yuffie can’t help the wail that comes bubbling out of her.

Cid touches her head; he’s still staring at the ceiling.

‘Goodbye,’ Yuffie manages to choke out, and she kisses Aerith’s forehead, and throws herself down the steps back onto dry land.

Tifa is there, but Tifa is not the same to hug. Yuffie knows that she is not the same either, but she accepts the hug for what it is, and they sob into each other’s shoulders for several minutes.

Cloud lays Aerith to rest, and comes back to them, holding Aerith’s ribbon. He’s biting his lip, and he’s breathing through his nose, hard, and fast, and his eyes are wet, but he swallows, and he breathes some more.

‘We need to move,’ he says. ‘Sephiroth is moving to the North Crater, we need to beat him there.’

Tifa takes the ribbon from his hand, and carefully ties it about his arm. Her bow is neat, and tidy, and will stay there for another two years. They will all have pink ribbons by that time. It is the way of things.

‘We need to rest,’ she says. ‘It’s – it’s been a long day. Sephiroth can wait a few hours.’

What Yuffie hears, but Tifa does not say, is that they are all tired. That they need to grieve. That they have a _child_ with them, and that she needs special treatment. Yuffie does not want to weigh them down, not now. So she draws her breath.

‘We need to get to Icicle Inn,’ she says, loud, too loud. ‘At the very least, that’s the first place we can stop. I looked at the map. It’s a tourist trap, but there’s an Inn, and we can – we can – we can do what we have to.’

Nobody disagrees with her; nobody even really listens. They had already agreed Icicle Inn was the next place to stop, and that hasn’t changed. They get their packs, and Barret puts Aerith’s over his own, and they begin to walk.

(The exhaustion gets her halfway up the mountain. Cid has lent her his spare trousers, and they drag through the snow. He carries her part of the way, Vincent and Tifa carrying their packs, and she sleeps against his shoulder.

‘It must be hard,’ she hears Tifa say. Cid squeezes her legs. ‘She’s so young.’

This is not Yuffie’s first murder rodeo, and she wants to tell Tifa that she will be fine. She survived her mother’s death, she will survive Aerith’s. But instead she sleeps.)

* * *

She wakes in the Inn’s bedroom, and for a second, she thinks she is alone. She stares at the ceiling, until the magnolia paint begins to break her heart, and she grabs at the nearest thing to pull over her head.

Cid’s jacket. It smells of sweat and grease and Shera’s perfume. Shera is nice, Yuffie thinks. She’s nice, and she’s soft, and her hands are as callused as Cid’s, but she smiles like Yuffie thinks a wife might smile, secretive and fond, at Cid when his back is turned. She’s only met the woman once, on a quick return trip to Rocket Town to get better tools, but Yuffie likes her. She’ll make Cid stay still one day, give him a reason to grow roots.

‘He left it,’ Vincent says from across the room, and she rips the jacket off her head and jolts upright.

Vincent, pale, beautiful Vincent, is sat by the window, arms folded, cloak up to his nose, brooding and dark in the blandness of the bedroom. Yuffie stares at him. He stares at the window, doesn’t even look at her. She’s used to that. Aerith used to tell her to ignore him back, that no man was pretty enough, her Zack included.

Yuffie chokes on her tongue, and Vincent hums.

‘The others will be back soon,’ he says, ‘they have gone to get supplies. Nanaki is downstairs.’

‘And they left you with me,’ Yuffie bites. It comes out harder than she means it to.

‘Cid was adamant someone stayed to keep you company, but Cloud needed him for the supplies.’

Yuffie’s lip curls. ‘So you’re watching for them to return so you can be rid of me.’

Vincent snorts. ‘If that is what you think.’

‘Well, what else will it be?’ she demands, and throws the covers off, leaping to her feet. The room spins, but she just holds her head with one hand and points with the other. ‘It’s not like you give a _shit_ about me, I’m just a _burden_ to you!’

‘That is not true,’ he says, but he says in the placating way an adult indulges a child when they aren’t wrong, but they can’t be validated.

‘So why are you here, then?’ she demands. She’s about to stomp her foot. ‘So you can brood and mope and whine about how hard and miserable your life is? Like you’re the only person to suffer?’

‘Yuffie,’ he starts.

‘She was my _friend_!’ she explodes, and does stamp her foot. ‘She was my friend, and she lied to me, and she told me she’d do all these things, and she _knew_ she was going to die! She lied to me!’

‘You have every right to grieve,’ Vincent tells her, and smoothly ignores the accusations of him being broody and miserable, because he is, but not for the reasons she seems sure he is. ‘She was, as you say, our friend. Grieving is natural, a normal part of the –‘

‘I’m going to be sick,’ she announces, cutting him off, because he’s full of _shit_ , and staggers to the bathroom.

He follows her, holds her hair back with his gloved hand, and she breathes the smell of the toilet in. It doesn’t make her feel less sick. But it’s a real smell, something tangible. Something real. Proof something still exists.

‘I miss her,’ she mumbles into the porcelain.

‘We will all miss her for a long time,’ Vincent murmurs, and Yuffie sniffles.

When she’s done retching and has washed her face and scrubbed her teeth until all she can taste is the spearmint of Cloud’s toothpaste – the only one left on the side, and Vincent unwilling to go through her pack to find hers despite her telling him it was fine, she didn’t have anything to hide – she takes a deep breath and decides that she is Better Now, and that Vincent can please leave her presence.

‘Cid said,’ he starts, and she snorts, stomps back into the room to grab Cid’s jacket and pull it on, climbing back into bed to keep her legs warm.

‘Cid isn’t my father, he can’t boss anyone around.’ She gives him a serious bit of side-eye and then says, ‘thought you were older than him, anyway.’

Vincent, pale, beautiful Vincent with his night-black hair and royal-red cape, flushes pink, and resolutely ignores her, staring out of the window with absolutely not a pout.

Cid returns not long after that. Yuffie has gone back to bed, and is reading a book she “borrowed” from the library in the Mansion. Vincent had found the choice of book – Frankenstein, a literary classic from long before Yuffie was born – amusing, but had not explained why. He had called it ironic, but Yuffie is sure that irony means something different.

He comes through the door to the bedroom still knocking snow off his jacket, and he has a bag for her.

‘Bought you some new kit,’ he says, ‘they had a weapons shop, so I picked up a new weapon for you.’

It’s a beautiful, monstrous bit of metal, and she rests it in her lap. She takes a breath, opens her mouth to talk, and then closes it again. She tries again another two times, and then finally asks him how much she owes him.

‘It must have cost,’ she tells him, not looking up. ‘This is a resort, they charge ridiculous amounts for things up here.’

Cid snorts, and she glances up at him. ‘Yuffie,’ he says, ‘I’m more offended that you offered to pay me back than I am that they charged me what they did. Don’t offer to pay me back again. You needed a new weapon, that ring is getting blunt as shit.’

She flushes; she’d been meaning to sharpen it, but never had.

‘Besides,’ he adds, ‘got myself a new spear. Well, it’s an axe. But I can still take a few cactuar heads off with it.’

It’s an attempt at levity, and she appreciate it.

‘Not if I get them first, old man.’

He tosses the rest of the bag at her.

‘Clothes,’ he says, ‘I want my britches back.’

She snorts. ‘Well, when you two perverts have gotten lost, I can get changed and you can have them back.’

‘Pervert,’ Cid snorts. ‘Fuckin’ charmin’.’

‘Language!’ Yuffie crows, and tosses his jacket at him. ‘I’m underage! You’re meant to be a responsible adult!’

Cid laughs, and Vincent shakes his head. The latter leaves, but the former lingers.

‘Hey,’ he says, and he looks serious, so the almost-smile on Yuffie’s face slips.

She takes a deep breath, and nods.

‘I’m alright,’ she says, and Cid purses his lips.

Instinctively, he touches the packet of cigarettes at his temple, but he doesn’t get one, doesn’t have so few manners as to light one inside.

‘Yuffie,’ he says, and Yuffie takes a breath.

‘She’s dead,’ she says, and Cid nods.

‘Yeah.’

He sits next to her; Yuffie’s feet don’t touch the floor. Her toes are small, and the nail polish chipped; he remembers, vividly, the incredulity he’d felt seeing the girls crowded around a campfire one night out in the Nibel area, their feet bare to the dirt, painting each other’s toenails. He’d opened his mouth, but Aerith, tiny pot of polish in her hands, bent over Yuffie’s toes, had turned her head, and she’d looked at him through her hair, and he’d clacked his teeth together around a cigarette, because that look had told him everything. Yuffie hadn’t _had_ girl-friends, hell, she’d probably not had friends at all, and this was essential bonding for the three of them. Aerith would have broken _his_ toes with her staff if he’d interfered, and so he’d kept his mouth shut, and read a book Shera had packed for him, half-listening to their whispers and giggles, and wondered what it would be like to be a father.

If he had been blind, he’d have not noticed the way Shera looked at him, and he’d have been blind to not look at her in turn, and his fingers itch to brush her hair from her face. He’ll use the phone later, the one in reception, call her. Make sure she’s fine. She is, she always is, but he’ll make sure. She took the time to save his life, least can do is make sure she’s still going.

‘She,’ she mumbles, picks at a scab on her thigh, a fading wound from an Acrophies of all things. She’d been distracted, that was the only reason she’d gotten hurt at all. ‘She told me, she said. She promised me she’d – she said that she’d talk to Vincent.’

Cid grunts; Aerith had begun to mumble, a little, when they walked beside one another, that Yuffie was – well, Yuffie is sixteen, and Cid does not remember being a teenager, but he knows that teenagers are full of shit, flexible and silly and changeable. She’s not in love, but she thinks she is, and Aerith had called it a crush, but Cid had looked after that, and had seen what faces Yuffie made, and he knows in his gut that this not-thing with Shera is love. It’s love and he’s too caught up in his own bullshit to tell her that, but Yuffie looks how he feels, and she couldn’t have chosen worse.

‘She said a lot of things,’ he offers. He squeezes her knee, gently. ‘I don’t think she planned it this way.’

‘I think she did,’ Yuffie asserts with a hard jerk of her chin. ‘I think she knew what was happening, and she went anyway. She didn’t tell us because she never wanted us to worry. We’d have stopped her if she said that she was marching off to her death. I’d have stopped her.’

‘You’d have tried to take her place,’ he replies, and she supposes that’s true. After a pause, he asks, ‘what did she promise to talk to Vincent about?’

This kind of thing is hard. He doesn’t do this emotional talk, this father-figure advisory business. This isn’t natural to him. Aerith always dealt with that, she was good with people, good with feelings and emotions. Cid punches walls and chain-smokes and tells Shera she’s the reason he’s not in space. Where is the line, at what point is he asking too much, and when is he asking not enough? He doesn’t know, and he fucking _hates_ it. Working for ShinRa had been easy; create an airship, pilot an airship, shoot some enemies, build a rocket. That had been easy enough, and his belly turns over.

‘He’s in love with someone,’ she shrugs, oblivious to the role Cid had played in her upbringing being what it was, ‘has been since I met him – before then, obviously. But I saw it in his face, and she said that she’d talk to him about it, find out who it is. I mean, he’s been asleep for like, a billion years right? She’s probably dead.’

‘Thirty,’ he says.

‘Old enough to be my grandfather,’ she sniffs, and Cid is almost impressed by the speed of those sums. ‘But.’

‘But what?’ he asks. ‘Kiddo, we’ve had our fights, eh? But this is one you ain’t gonna win. Not with him. With whoever She is.’

‘I might.’ But it sounds about as pathetic as she feels. ‘God, look at me. A good friend is dead and here I am thinking about boys. I am as stupid as Godo always said.’

Cid feels, not for the first time, the desperate urge to go to prison. He’s spent a couple nights, in his youth, in county, but he’s never been to prison proper. But he would, for this flighty little thing next to him. He’d punch Godo in the face, he’d break the bastard’s nose, and he wouldn’t think twice about it. She was nine years old last time he set foot in Wutai, and Godo had been as fucking useless a father than as he sounds now. He hadn’t seen her in Wutai, but he’d heard the stories, heard about this plucky kid and how she’d faced the Turks down, about the trouble she was causing. He’d heard all about it, but by then, he was out of the country, back on the Western continent, sketching up designs for the rockets. He’d done his job.

‘Godo is wrong,’ he says, categorically, like he’s talking about the weather. ‘Godo is wrong, and you need to understand that. You’re stupid because you’re young, Yuffie. We’re all stupid when we’re young. You just have the misfortune of having been young around that cunt.’

She doesn’t gasp, doesn’t even react.

‘He’s not a cunt,’ she says, monotone and limp.

‘Sure he is,’ Cid snorts, clapping her knee and getting to his feet. He fiddles with his goggles, shakes a cigarette free. Tapping it against his palm, he adds, ‘I’ll tell him to his face next time I see him too, you watch. Nobody will be able to stop me. I’ll look him straight in the eye and I’ll say, “Godo, you’re a cunt.” You watch.’

She smiles, which is what he wanted. It’s bitter, and it’s sad, and it’s not really a smile, but her lips are curling up, and he nods at her, takes his leave.

* * *

Later, he sits by the fire, and he stares into the flames, and tries not to see blood in them. Tifa is curled up in the next chair. Barret is the furthest chair, slouched with his legs out and snoring. He’s too big for the chair really, six-five and all muscle, the snore rumbling like a bear, but the noise is – well, it’s not nice. But he’s sleeping, and that’s good. Someone needs to sleep.

‘I think,’ Cid starts, and Tifa hums, but he doesn’t know what he thinks.

He thinks about Aerith, and Yuffie, and how they’d gossiped and whispered to each other, quiet as mice, but giggling as loud as possible. Tifa had been walking with Cloud and Barret, talking about AVALANCHE and Midgar, and a lot of things that Cid hadn’t known enough about to care, and Red and Vincent had been walking along, talking philosophy. Cid had been tailing after them, so as to not get cigarette smoke on them, seeing as they were walking downwind, and he’d smiled watching them gossip. He smiles now.

‘Huh,’ he says, and Tifa hums again.

‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘Thinking about her, is all,’ he says, ‘the way she used to whisper in Yuffie’s ear and make her blush. Never really thought much about it, but it’s nice to think about it now.’

Tifa smiles, and he thinks it would be very easy to fall in love with that smile. He thinks, to himself, in a way that he knows Aerith would have caught his eye over, that Cloud is missing a trick not getting on one of his bony knees right now to get her on his finger. He’s surrounded, somehow, by a trio – a duo, duo, just the pair now – of very pretty girls, and Shera aches like a chronic stitch somewhere behind his lungs. His heart. God, he misses her.

It’s easier for him, he thinks; his almost-not-quite marriage is for the most part intact, a solid, unshakeable thing. Sure, they’ve never said any words to the effect of even particularly liking each other, but he thinks that Shera knows he’s in love with her. And he thinks that he knows that she feels the same. When all this is over, he thinks he’ll propose.

‘Do you think Shera would marry me?’ he asks, aloud, a tangible sentence caught in the nicotine-tang behind his teeth.

‘Yes,’ Tifa replies, though her eyebrows are knotted.

‘I love her,’ Cid tells her, and it’s the first time he’s said it out loud.

‘I know.’

But Tifa’s eyes are still sad, and she is still thinking of other things. Part of him, the part that shouted swears instead of coming up with tangible reasons why silly women should not be allowed into dangerously damaged rockets, acknowledges that marriage was probably not the best topic to bring up right now. But the rest thinks that perhaps it was the perfect topic; what woman didn’t enjoy a good wedding? It would give them something to look forward to.

‘I might ask Yuffie to help me find a ring.’

Tifa looks aghast. ‘Cid!’ she yelps. Barret snorts, and she flushes a deep crimson. ‘Stop encouraging her to _steal_.’

The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. It might save him a few thousand gil though; girl had nimble fingers.

‘Cid, don’t.’ Tifa seems sadder, under the bluster, and Cid has no choice but to apologise.

‘I thought it would help,’ he admits, and adds that he was wrong.

She nods, accepting the apology, and asks that they just sit quietly.

He nods acquiescence and goes outside to smoke. Cloud is out there, sat on the step and staring into nothing. They talk, briefly, of what they’d heard in that house, of what it means. Cloud is not in the mood for in-depth conversation. Cid wonders whether he should tell him to talk to Tifa, but the sadness in Cloud’s eyes, the tiredness, stops him. He steps aside to smoke, and leaves the ex-SOLDIER to his ruminating.

* * *

Everybody else has gone to bed. He sits in the chair until the fire goes out. Tifa gently shakes Barret awake, helps him out of the chair and sends him off to the stairs. She turns back once she’s sure he’s going, and rests a soft hand on Cid’s arm.

‘Don’t stay up too late,’ she says, and he shakes his head.

‘Gonna have a last one,’ he says, tapping his temple, ‘then I’ll be up.’

‘Cloud said we’re going to move out in the morning,’ she says, and he nods this time.

‘We’ll get the bastard, don’t worry,’ he says.

‘I hope so,’ she agrees. ‘Goodnight, Cid.’

‘G’night,’ he replies, touches her hand before she withdraws it.

When her door has shut, he stares at the embers. It’s quiet here. Barret is already snoring again. Vincent is no doubt still awake, brooding and bemoaning his existence. Yuffie had been a little more herself, challenging Red to training exercises, and she’d been certainly avoiding Vincent, but Cid wasn’t about to alert everyone to it.

He gets, creaking and grunting, to his feet, and goes to the phone. It’s late in Rocket Town, but he dials the number before he can stop himself.

‘Highwind,’ comes Shera’s voice, slurred with sleep.

Fuck, it’s good to hear her voice. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear it until he heard it, and there she is. He can imagine her, her hair a mess, no glasses, in the oversized T-shirt and underwear he knows she sleeps in, and he can picture the curve of her leg, bent as her weight leans on the wall. She’s beautiful, in an understated sort of way, and he’d never thought about it as much as he has these last couple days. If Yuffie is stupid for worrying about a boy when Aerith walked to her death, what does that make him? Would this be what Aerith wants? For them to distract themselves? To find happiness, in the wake of such tragedy?

‘Oh,’ he says to distract himself before he gets thinking too hard about it all, and leans heavily on the desk, ‘I wasn’t aware the Captain was accounted for.’

‘Captain!’ she crows, and he can hear her straighten, hear her fuss with her hair, hear the sleepiness getting blinked from her eyes. ‘Are you alright? I know I shouldn’t expect you to call, but I haven’t heard – ‘

‘Yeah,’ he says, quiet, cutting her off, ‘it’s been – it’s been a long few days.’

She hears what he’s not saying, and she sobers, her soul quietens. ‘What happened?’ she asks, ‘if I can ask that.’

‘You – you remember – you remember Aerith?’ he asks, clearing his throat. He feels choked, feels like he’s got no air left in his lungs, like he’s been eating grit.

‘The – the pretty girl, with the plait and the pink dress? She was nice.’ Shera’s tone is tentative. ‘Has something happened?’

Cid doesn’t say anything for a moment, though his mouth opens. He hasn’t really cried yet. He’s not much of a crier anyway, but he feels like he should.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh, Cid, I’m so sorry.’

‘Shut the fuck up with that apologising _bullshit_ ,’ he snaps, harder than he means to. He hears her bristle; better than a flinch. ‘Sorry, sorry, I just – the fuck are _you_ apologising for?’

‘Because she was _nice_ , Cid. She was nice, and she was kind, and she helped me make tea, and just – was it _him_?’

‘Sephiroth? Yeah. We’re going to fucking kill him.’

‘Good.’

The hardness to that single word has him taken aback. Shera wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but he thinks she’d swing, if she could.

‘Are you,’ she starts, and pauses. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine. Bit bruised from the battles, but I’m alive. More than I can say for some.’

He hears the rustle of hair; she’s nodding. ‘You’ll come home to me, won’t you?’ she asks, and then clears her throat. ‘I mean, I’m in the house. So you’ll be coming back here.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding. ‘Yeah, I – Shera, I wanted to ask – ‘

But he never gets to, because there’s a scream, and a cry, and several doors slam open.

‘I need to go,’ he says, ‘love you.’

And he slams the receiver down before he really realises what he’s said. His attention is elsewhere, even if Shera will hold those two words very, very close to her chest until she sees him again. Yuffie comes barrelling out of her room at the same time as the others do. She’s crying, and before Cid really thinks too much about it, he’s taking the three steps he needs to jump up onto the stairs bannister and up again onto the landing. There’s no need to, he could have just as easily ran up the stairs, but why walk when you can run and why run when you can fly?

Yuffie crashes into him as he hits the floorboards, and he holds her tight.

‘Hey, hey,’ he breathes, ‘hey, what’s all this?’

‘I saw him!’ she sobs into his chest. ‘I saw him, he was there! He was right _there_!’

Tifa is wringing her hands, rocking on her feet. She wants to jump in, but she can’t.

‘Guys,’ Cloud murmurs, looking harrowed and exhausted, ‘guys, we gotta move in the morning, go back to bed.’

Cid looks at him; Cloud inclines his head, just a small motion, and he carefully herds Tifa back to her room. Barret follows Cloud into theirs, and Vincent and Red hover for a moment; Cid had been sharing with them, but he offers them a look, and they retreat.

Yuffie’s sobs subside, and she breathes deep into the wet cotton.

‘Your laundry bill’s gonna be sky-high ‘cause of me,’ she sniffles, and Cid barks out a laugh.

‘Never mind that,’ he says, ‘you’re dreamin’ about – what happened.’

She wipes her eyes with her fingers, her nose with the back of her arm. Disgusting child. Her hair’s a mess, her pyjamas oversized, her face so horribly _sad_ and he aches. When all this is over, he’ll offer her the back room at the house. It’s full of junk, but he can clear it out. Shera’s been on his case about tidying it up anyway. They can make it into a bedroom for her. She can stay as long as she wants. Aerith’s given him a lot to think about these past few hours, and he doesn’t really know what to do with all the thinking he’s been doing. He owes Shera an apology, he knows that much. He’s been vile to her, and she’s taken it, and fuck sake. Aerith’s got him thinking about Yuffie, about what they’re going to do when all this is over, and it’s not something he’d have considered thirty hours ago, but here he is.

Fuck sake, Godo’s such a prick.

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘kind of. I – it wasn’t. I saw.’

She bites her lip, looks over her shoulder. Cid follows her gaze, to the half-open bedroom where Vincent and Red are talking in a low murmur, their voices a baritone susurrus of philosophy.

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I see.’

‘He killed him, and I. I know he’s got – whatever that shit is.’

‘Language,’ Cid interrupts, and she sticks a finger up at him.

‘I know he’s got that stuff going on, but – he can still die. And I – I don’t want him to die.’

Cid nods, understands that. Vincent is the worst choice for her to have this attachment to and fancy for. But he understands. Cloud would have made sense, the shrimp’s weird and everything about him is odd, slightly off-kilter, but he’s funny, when he tries, and he’s kind, and he makes sense as a crush. Vincent is – Cid would ask Shera, if he thought she’d have any sensible answer. She seems taken with him, so what does he know about what women want?

‘I understand,’ he tells her, because she needs to know. ‘And I know it sounds trite, but you know he won’t. He’s too miserable to let himself be killed. It’d be convenient for him to die.’

Yuffie snorts wetly, and wipes her eyes again.

‘I’m just pathetic,’ she tells him, with that chipper tone she uses when she wants to end a conversation, and Cid wants to punch something because she’s learnt that.

‘Use that word again and I’ll knock your teeth out,’ he tells her.

‘You’d have to catch me first, old man,’ she says, and he rests a hand on her head.

‘You’re a pain in my ass,’ he assures her, ‘can’t outrun that. Come on, go back to bed.’

He’s not the best at comfort, not the best at this shit. He’s trying his best, but he doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He walks her to her door, and Tifa is sat up still, waiting for them. She extends her arms to Yuffie, who goes to her without hesitation, and Cid knows they’ll get the girls up in the morning with them huddled together in the same bed. But it’ll keep Yuffie down for the night.

‘Cid?’ Yuffie asks, as he turns to shut the door behind him.

He grunts, and looks back to see her fiddling with her fingers.

‘Could – could I have – could you leave your jacket? It – it helped me sleep, when you left it last time.’

He nods, and shrugs out of it, tosses it across to her.

‘There’s some gil in my wallet,’ he tells her, ‘no idea how much.’

She narrows her eyes at him, then fishes in the pockets to find it, and tosses it back to him.

‘Keep it,’ she says, ‘I know how much that Hawkeye cost, I’m not taking any more from you.’

The sincerity of it, the honesty in her face, is sickening.

‘Goodnight, girls,’ he says, around the clog in his throat, and shuts the door.

He listens to them murmur for a moment, Tifa asking if she’s okay, what the dream was about, what she can do to help, and then he marches to the room he’s sharing with Vincent, and kicks the door open.

‘You,’ he demands, pointing wildly at the Turk. ‘Outside, now.’

Vincent raises his eyebrows, but obligingly gets to his feet, and follows Cid downstairs.

Cid has no jacket now, no gloves, and his arm hair prickles immediately the moment he opens the door. His nose is cold before he’s outside, but he’s not about to back down. He said outside, and he means it.

‘What do you want, Cid?’ Vincent asks, so monotone, as though bored.

‘Yuffie,’ he says, ‘stay the _fuck_ away from her.’

Vincent tilts his head. ‘What?’

He tells Vincent to grow the fuck up, he’s old enough to be the girl’s grandfather who the fuck does he think he is.

‘She has just lost her fucking _friend_ , Vincent,’ Cid snarls, because for all he’s been – not calm, but for all this crisis, this loss and this pain, has tempered the anger and the bitterness, he’s still up in the man’s business. ‘Probably her _best_ friend. One of the few fucking friends she has on this god-forsaken rock, because fucking hell, we certainly didn’t do a good job of it when she came to us, did we? We fucking led a _manhunt_ after the poor girl.’

Vince frowns at him, the way Vincent frowns at everything that is not logical or particularly interesting to him, which is to say, everything everyone except Aerith says to him.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You heard me. You _fucking_ heard me. You are _destroying_ her, you little shit.’

‘You are not her father,’ Vincent says, in the kind of echoing tone that makes it clear that Yuffie’s made a similar remark and Cid just –

‘No,’ he agrees. ‘I’m not.’

And he punches Vincent in the face.

It doesn’t really accomplish a lot beside breaking Cid’s knuckles. Vincent is immovable object, stone beneath his marble skin, but Cid feels better for it.

‘I have lost people, too,’ Vincent says, as though that matters at all.

‘Oh, boo fucking hoo,’ Cid spits. Vincent thinks he’s all high and mighty, because he has a _tragic past_ , and has some lost lady love he’ll never see again, and that’s _so sad_. He’s never been so close to throwing up out of vitriol in his _life_. ‘See, the thing is, Vince, you never had to lose _anyone_. You never had to worry about that. You were asleep, hiding like the little baby you are. She lived through Wutai, you know. She’s fighting to bring her home back to its former glory. What are you doing, eh? Skulking around feeling sorry for yourself.’

Vincent, with the red mark of knuckles on his cheek, gives Cid a droll, unimpressed, look. 

‘I watched the woman I love be tortured by her husband,’ he says, ‘and I was powerless to stop it.’

‘Nobody is ever powerless,’ Cid says. ‘You choose your fucking path, Vincent. You’ve chosen this life, and Yuffie’s the poor fucker that has to live with always being shit under your shoe.’

Vincent looks unmoved. Cid hadn’t expected him to be anything else; if he’d suddenly professed interest in her, he’d have had to run the man through with his own fist.

‘Cid,’ Vincent says, ‘Yuffie is a child. I was – asleep – before she was born. What happened to me was – I am no interested in any affection she has to give me.’

‘Funny that,’ Cid says, ‘because I’ve seen you.’

He hasn’t, but the way Vincent’s eyes tighten make him wonder if he should have.

(In truth, Vincent is neither blind nor particularly stupid. He has seen Yuffie’s face when she thinks he can’t see her, and Aerith had made noise about the possibility of him moving on from Lucretia. But Yuffie is not the kind of girl he’d consider moving on with if he was in a place to do so. He’s fascinated by her, regardless, the way that one is fascinated by a serial killer or a car crash. It horrifies her, and he has no desire to be anywhere near the reality of it, but he enjoys learning all the same.)

‘Just stay away from her,’ Cid snaps, ‘make it clear that you aren’t interested. Get her to move on.’

‘I was under the impression I had already done so, what with my bemoaning my existence and my lost lady love and such.’

The dryness of his tone is not funny.

‘Just stay away,’ Cid repeats, and shoulders his way past Vincent to go back inside.

He’s not good at this shit, but at least he admits it. To himself, at least.

Red looks at him over the top of a paw when he enters the bedroom, and then yawns.

‘You are not very quiet,’ the creature says.

‘Don’t need to be,’ Cid replies, kicking off his boots, hissing when he tries to undo the laces.

His hand is blackening. Broken.

‘Cid,’ Red says, ‘you are a good man.’

‘Thanks, but I’m decent at best.’

‘She loves you for it.’

But he doesn’t tell him who he means, closing his eyes and burying his face.

* * *

In the morning, Yuffie wakes alone, with Red on the floor next to her.

‘Where’s Tifa gone?’ she asks.

‘She couldn’t sleep, she asked me to stay with you.’

Yuffie nods, and rubs her eyes. She needs to wash her face, the salt of her tears has left her skin tight, and Aerith would always tell her how much it would age her skin and then she’d look like her grandma and nobody was scared of her grandma. Yuffie had told her that Aerith had clearly never met a Wutaian grandma, and Aerith had expressed hope that maybe one day Yuffie could take her there and show her the grandma that she clearly knew well enough to know was representative of the entire age bracket.

‘Fucking liar,’ she spits, and Red looks at her in shock.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he asks.

‘Aerith,’ Yuffie says, venomous and helpless at once. ‘She’s a liar, she lied to me, she lied to all of us. She lied about everything. She’s dead and she lied about it.’

Red opens his mouth, but Yuffie is already choked, and leaves the room with a sniffle, wiping her nose on her arm.

When she’s washed and dressed in a thick sweater and pair of dark multi-pocketed trousers that Cid had purchased for her, she heads downstairs to find Cid at Tifa’s mercy, her fingers glowing green as she holds his bruised and swollen hand to the light.

‘Why?’ she’s asking as Yuffie jumps the last of the stairs, silent in her socks, and Cid grunts.

‘Fucker had it coming,’ he says, and Yuffie frowns at the back of his head.

Tifa finishes up the Cure spell, and lets go of his hand, warning him not to go punching people so much, he’s getting too old.

‘Thirty-two ain’t too old, you and I both know that,’ he says, and turns, only to be taken aback by Yuffie stood there, gawking. ‘How’d you sleep?’

‘Alright,’ she nods.

‘No more bad dreams?’

‘Not that I remember.’

Cid nods. ‘Good.’

It’s awkward. There’s an atmosphere. Tifa shuffles her feet, and then excuses herself to go to the bathroom. They’re alone in the foyer, and Cid doesn’t know what to do with himself.

‘What did you do?’ Yuffie asks, and crosses the space to snatch his hand out of the air between them, look at the scabs and blisters and stains, his dry skin looking too shiny and smooth, the way it always does after a Cure.

Cid looks at her seriously for a moment, a deep crease between his eyebrows and something sad in his eyes. His jaw tics, but he gets it back under control after a moment, and his face is carefully neutral.

‘Dealt with a problem.’

Yuffie wrinkles her nose, and then tenses.

‘Did someone try and break in? I’ll – I’ll – no one gets away from me! I’ll track ‘em down, Cid, you just – you point me in the right direction and I’ll get them!’

Cid rests his new-skin, baby-pink, too-smooth hand on her arm, his expression horribly gentle.

‘No, no, nothing like that. There was just – I had to say a few things, so I said them.’

‘And it broke your hand?’

‘Some things don’t get said with words.’

The thought of Cid getting into a fight outside of those awful encounters with the monsters in the plains, the thought of Cid getting into an actual physical fight makes her feel – feel – she feels wrong. Cid is a noisy, aggressive man, but he doesn’t get into fights these days. Aerith had worked her magic on him the way she did to everyone, and Cid had cooled his jets, at least a little. HE was still loud, and rude, and angry, but he didn’t get into _fights_ , and he certainly didn’t get into fights over _her_.

‘Who did you punch?’ she asks, her stomach churning.

For all she is young and naïve and arguably innocent, she is not a fool, and she knows, in that same churning belly, filled with moths and wriggling things and the shadows on the wall stretching out to strangle her, she knows that Cid is not – he is not –

He cares, and that’s enough.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he tells her, because he knows that Vincent doesn’t have a mark on his cheek any more, and there’s no sign of him around anyway, he’s long since flounced off in his fake offence of the day, brooding on some rooftop somewhere until Cloud calls him on the PHS to get him to move his ass in the direction of the North Crater.

‘If you’re sure,’ she says, her lips pursed.

‘I’m sure,’ Cid says.

They’re walking out of the Inn, and towards their next destination when he turns to her. She’s bundled up, terrible at handling the cold, a scarf over her nose and hat low over her ears, hands in her coat pockets. She’ll barely be able to fight like this, but they’ll manage.

‘Hey,’ he says, quietly, and she looks up at him, snow on her eyelashes.

‘Yeah?’

‘When this is over,’ he says, ‘all this shit with Sephiroth, and the saving-the-world shit. I’ve got – back home, we got a spare room. ‘S yours, if you want it. So you don’t have to go back to Godo, I mean.’

She stares at him for a second, and then he sees a blush come over the top of her scarf.

‘You want that?’ she asks, and scuffs some snow with her boots.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I reckon so. You’ll be useful around the place, and Shera and me, I reckon we could use the company.’

Yuffie doesn’t say anything for a minute.

‘I’d like that.’

‘Okay, then.’

She looks at him again for a moment, and then abruptly rushes off ahead, falling into step with Tifa, and he watches them put their heads close together, whispering and giggling. He knocks a cigarette from the pack under his goggles, and sticks it in his mouth.

Yeah, he thinks. Family ain’t so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> I will die on the hill that Cid is a Yorkshireman, sorry Chris, but he's the most British man I've ever seen, and I will go to my grave.
> 
> Consanguinity is to do with being blood relations.


End file.
